2011/10/21 by Shuai Cui, Jun Cao, Cui, Shuai +9
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1110.4690
9 pages, 15 figures
openalex publication_date 2011/10/21 · arxiv created 2012/01/16 · arxiv updated 2012/01/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the time evolution of a generic and finite isolated quantum many-body system starting from a pure quantum state. We find the kinematical general canonical principle proposed by Popescu-Short-Winter for statistical mechanics can be built in a more solid ground by studying the thermalization, i.e. comparing the density matrices themselves rather than the measures of distances. In particular, this allows us to explicitly identify that, from any instantaneous pure state after thermalization, the state of subsystem is like from a microcanonical ensemble or a generalized Gibbs ensemble, but neither a canonical nor a thermal ones due to finite-size effect. Our results are expected to bring the task of characterizing the state after thermalization to completion. In addition, thermalization of coupled systems with different temperatures corresponding to mixed initial states is studied.